Organizational Immersion and Diagnosis:

The Work of Harry Levinson

Michael A. Diamond*
It was in 1968 that Harry Levinson established The Levinson Institute
during his years on faculty at the Harvard Business School. The
Institute emerged from 14 years of work at The Menninger Foundation
of Topeka, Kansas where he was director of the Division of Industrial
Mental Health. His goal with The Levinson Institute was twofold. First,
he wanted to develop and apply psychoanalytic theory to managerial
practice and organizations and second, he wanted to develop `a more
sophisticated understanding of the psychology of leadership and
organizational processes' (personal correspondence, 1985). This under-
standing `would simultaneously inform and enrich the activities of
management and leadership, and by so doing also contribute to the
mental health of people who worked in organizations' (ibid.). This
article is a retrospective of the work of Harry Levinson and his
contributions to our understanding of organizations.
In the following, I present readers with an overview of Levinson's
contributions to psychoanalytic organization psychology. Then, I share
excerpts from an interview conducted with Harry Levinson in August
2002 during the American Psychological Association meetings in
Chicago, Illinois. Finally, I provide a listing of his books and articles,
which include published works not reviewed here. My intent is to offer
readers a perspective on his impact on the psychoanalytic study of
organizations.
BACKGROUND
Harry Levinson, the son of a Polish, Jewish tailor from Lodz, was born
in Port Jervis, New York more than 80 years ago. Considered by many
as the founder of psychoanalytic organization psychology, he was
Organisational & Social Dynamics 3(1): 118 (2003)
1
*Address for correspondence: Michael A. Diamond, PhD, Director & Professor, Center for
the Study of Organizational Change, 239 Middlebush Hall, University of Missouri -
Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211 USA.
awarded the prestigious American Psychological Foundation Gold
Medal for Life Achievement in the Application of Psychology in 2000.
Now semi-retired and living with his wife Miriam in Delray Beach,
Florida, he is chairman of The Levinson Institute and Clinical Professor
of Psychology Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School. He received his BSc and MSc degrees from Kansas
(Emporia) State University and his PhD in psychology from The
University of Kansas, where he received clinical training in psychology
at the Veterans Administration and The Menninger Foundation in
Topeka, Kansas.
From 1950 to 1953, he was coordinator of professional education at
Topeka State Hospital and had a central role in the reorganization of
the Kansas state hospital system. In 1954 he established, and for the
next 14 years directed, the Division of Industrial Mental Health of The
Menninger Foundation. According to Levinson, `I had begun the task
on January 1, 1954, when Dr William C. Menninger asked me to
undertake a project that would do something about keeping well
people functioning well'. He wrote later:
Naturally, if one is to do something in a public health sense about keeping
people well, that is most easily done through social systems and primarily,
therefore, with those institutions in which people work, inasmuch as their work
is of great psychological significance to them. (personal correspondence, 1993)
During the academic year 19611962 he was Visiting Professor in the
Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and in 1967 in the School of Business at the University of
Kansas. From 1968 to 1972 he was Thomas Henry Carroll-Ford
Foundation distinguished visiting professor in the Harvard Graduate
School of Business Administration. Throughout his career, he has
sought to create a systematic application of psychoanalytic theory to
management (Levinson, 1976; W. Lorsch, ed. 1987).
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF
ORGANIZATIONS
Levinson is known for developing insightful and practical concepts
informed by a deep appreciation of the nature of the workplace. What
follows is an overview of many contributions by Harry Levinson.
The emotional first aid stations
In 1954 Levinson along with William C. Menninger wrote `Industrial
mental health: some observations and trends' in the Menninger
MICHAEL A. DIAMOND 2
Quarterly and in 1956 he wrote `Employee counseling in industry' for
the Bulletin of The Menninger Clinic. These articles were groundbreaking
in their acknowledgment of the need for emotional support and care for
workers and managers. These articles were precursors of today's
employee assistance programs.
The psychological contract
In 1962 Levinson (with Charlton Price, Kenneth Munden, Harold
Mandl, and Charles Solley) wrote Men, Management, and Mental Health,
which introduced the concept of the `psychological contract'. In the
book, Levinson explained how the psychological contract shapes the
expectations of employees and the organizations they work for.
Levinson's notion of a psychological contract encompassed an acknowl-
edgement of conscious and unconscious human needs and desires that
employees invest in their relationship with the organization and its
leadership. He argued that unless management is psychologically
aware of these manifest and latent dimensions of worker motivation, it
is highly unlikely that employees will feel adequately nurtured by their
employers. This oversight of course can lead to demoralization and
poor performance.
The psychological contract is a valuable conceptual tool for managers
and consultants as they consider failures of supervision and commu-
nication between supervisors and subordinates, executives and their
staff. Application of the psychological contract between employer and
employee requires perpetual dialogue between the parties, acknowl-
edging the dynamics of mutual needs and expectations, conscious and
unconscious. Levinson's use of ego psychology and the management of
the ego ideal shaped his earliest thinking about motivation and
emotional well-being at work.
Reminiscent of the human relations and humanist movements in
management theory at the time, Levinson's psychoanalytic approach
was distinctive in its application of a systematic model of human
personality. His stress on the individual ego ideal and one's emotional
investment in the workplace provided a deeper and more comprehen-
sive understanding of the collision between individual and organization.
Psychological anthropology
Men, Management, and Mental Health (1962) also provided a
groundbreaking multidisciplinary study of the Kansas Power and
Light Company and was an example of (what Levinson calls)
psychological anthropology a notion he uses to this day to describe
THE WORK OF HARRY LEVINSON 3
a process of `immersion' central to psychoanalytic organizational
diagnosis and consultation. In the spirit of Kurt Lewin's action research
model for applied social science, Levinson's notion of immersion is
indicative of his belief that knowledge of organizations requires
experience of the organization from the inside what some anthro-
pologists and social scientists would call `participant observation'.
Although, in Levinson's framework, psychoanalytic theory, self and
other awareness, provide researchers and consultants with the
conceptual model and potential psychodynamic awareness necessary
for constructive and insightful immersion as observing participants.
Over 40 years ago, Levinson and his colleagues spent time out in the
field with workers, observing, participating, interviewing, and even-
tually understanding and documenting the crucial role of work groups
and their leaders in organizations. In particular, they illustrated how
the paternal foreman established meaningful and familial-like emo-
tional ties (positive transference and counter-transference) with his
workers and consequently enhanced their safety and minimized
accidents under typically dangerous working conditions. For Levinson,
the informal and affectionate bonds between workers and their
foremen (supervisors) helped to explain effective, physically safe and
emotional healthy, management performance in the workplace. The
study also pre-dated much of the popular enthusiasm several decades
later with organizational culture.
Management-by-guilt
In 1964, Levinson observed difficulties of supervision in managing
subordinate performance in the workplace. In particular, he saw a
problem for managers that some individuals understood intuitively,
yet had no psychological basis for articulating and correcting it.
Managers often found it troubling and many felt conflicted, that is
guilty, about evaluating subordinate performance, especially when the
evaluation required negative and critical feedback of the employee's
work.
Levinson not only explained the psychodynamics of guilt, he
emphasized the human compassion inherent in and necessary for
providing subordinates with unambiguous, direct, and honest feedback
in performance evaluation. From the notion of `management-by-guilt'
supervisors came to better appreciate their ambivalent feelings
surrounding the act of subordinate evaluations. They also came to
appreciate the value of sincere feedback in the development of
subordinate career opportunities. Consultants learned to pay attention
to these difficulties of supervision and provide help to their clients. Out
MICHAEL A. DIAMOND 4
of these insights surrounding the ego ideal at work, Levinson came to
stress the leadership's role in mentoring and educating workers.
The organization as learning institution
In 1968, Levinson published The Exceptional Executive, later (1981)
revised and updated in the Executive and published by Harvard
University Press. Subtitled `The guide to responsive management',
Levinson continued his investigation of managerial performance
through the lens of psychoanalytic ego psychology. Progressing on
themes he started to explore in earlier writings, he argued that one of
management's primary failures is their unawareness of the depth and
dimensions of human needs of employees. Executives and their
management must become better mentors, he argued, and to do so
they must become more knowledgeable about what motivates their
employees.
In the Executive (1968, 1981), Levinson asks managers to pay
attention to three primary human drives: ministration, maturation,
and mastery. Ministration, according to Levinson, takes into account
needs for gratification, closeness, support, protection, and guidance.
Maturation needs comprise fostering creativity, originality, self-control,
and reality testing. Mastery needs encompass the demands for
ambitious striving, realistic achievement, rivalry with affection, and
consolidation. With these human needs in mind, executives could
engage in more thoughtful and reflective dialogues with their workers
and might establish management systems responsive to individual
potential and desire for advancement. Motivation could be understood
as multidimensional and leaders could actually facilitate growth and
maturation in their own careers and the careers of their employees. One
cannot help but reflect on how challenging such sensitivity to human
needs of workers has become in our contemporary global economy of
volatility, downsizing, and re-engineering.
A framework for problem analysis
In the Executive, Levinson (1968, 1981 revised) provided a psycho-
analytic framework for problem diagnosis as well. The framework was
designed to assist managers in problem solving focused on personnel
conflicts and performance issues. Here he presented a template for
analysing troublesome human relations at work and a practical
application of psychoanalytic theory in the workplace.
Consistent with his earlier writing, he suggested examining the
individual ego ideal in the work setting and the degree to which the
THE WORK OF HARRY LEVINSON 5
individual manager, executive or worker feels he or she has lived up to
this ideal. Many consultants and researchers of organizations can recall
the frequency with which workers feel they fall short of their personal
goals or are not working at their level of competency and training.
Next, Levinson looked at how the individual deals with needs for
affection and his or her desire to develop close ties with colleagues in
the workplace. Certainly, Levinson's earlier experiences in the field
indicated that informal attachments in work groups, such as the case
with his study of the Kansas Power and Light Company, are often
critical to understanding dynamics in the organization. Then, he asked
how the individual copes with feelings of aggression at work. Here, the
influences of drive theory and ego psychology come through in an
implicit acknowledgement of the role of work as a form of sublimation
and the absorption of aggressive energies. Finally, Levinson encour-
aged paying attention to how workers react to dependency demands
(1981, p. 33). Given the hierarchic structure of most organizations, the
phenomenon of dependency enabled consultants and researchers to
examine more closely the nature of super- and subordinate relation-
ships at work.
In Psychological Man (1976), this framework is formulated into
questions. In a rather simple and unforgettable outline, Levinson asks
the following: Who is in pain? When did it begin? What is happening to
needs for: aggression, affection, and dependency? What is the nature of
the ego ideal? Is the problem solvable? If so, how? Thus, Levinson
illustrated how one could arrange and interpret data (in a psycho-
analytically informed way) around problems and conflicts in the
workplace that might otherwise leave managers and executives
perplexed and seemingly without recourse. His (1972) book Organiza-
tional Diagnosis expanded this capacity for analysing problems to the
systemic level of analysis.
Organizational diagnosis
In 1972 Levinson's book Organizational Diagnosis was published by
Harvard University Press. The book is a comprehensive guide to
analysing organizations and arranging the complexity of varied data
(factual, historical, genetic, interpretive) into a systemic understanding
of its integrative and adaptive processes. According to Levinson:
this was an adaptation of an open system biological model, which had been
applied to individuals, for the study and analysis of organizations. It
emphasized the need to understand organizations and their problems before
trying to intervene into them. The diagnostic emphasis was a uniquely
clinical contribution because so much of what had been done in organization
MICHAEL A. DIAMOND 6
development was essentially ad hoc application of established techniques
without adequate diagnosis. (correspondence, 1985)
Organizational diagnosis, arguably, may be Levinson's most important
contribution and in 2002 the American Psychological Association
published an updated and revised version in Organizational Assessment:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Consulting.
For many organizational analysts and consultants, particularly some
psychoanalytically oriented, organizational diagnosis became the
central component to comprehensive processes for `real' organizational
change. This meant that prior to engaging or contracting for a
particular intervention strategy (such as strategic planning, reorganiza-
tion, team-building, executive coaching, and the like), the client and
consultant would agree to a comprehensive study of the organization
as an open system. This meant that, regardless of the executive
leadership's assumptions of `the problem', these assumptions would
need to be suspended until a comprehensive analysis of the organiza-
tion was complete and not until the consultants collected historical,
factual, and interpretive data through extensive interviews and
observations. In other words, strategies of intervention and change,
in Levinson's model of organizational diagnosis, would follow and be
governed by an organizational assessment. It was also in this extensive
work that Levinson articulated the nature of transference and counter-
transference between the organizational consultant and clients,
encouraging consultants to pay attention to how they are received
and `used' emotionally and psychologically by their clients.
Loss in organizational change
In his 1972 Harvard Business Review article `Easing the pain of personal
loss', Levinson explains the psychodynamics of organizational change
from the standpoint of change as a personal experience with loss. Here
and elsewhere in later publications, he described processes of grief and
mourning that gave emotional legitimacy to the human defences and
reactions of denial, anger, searching for the lost object, disorganization,
and reorganization. Management from this point on was encouraged to
acknowledge that changes in the workplace are not effectively
implemented without processes that acknowledge participants' feelings
of attachment to routines and structures and the pain of relinquishing
social defences and embracing the uncertainty of the future workplace.
Difficulties in mourning or inadequate attention to the emotional
dynamics of loss could sabotage an otherwise systematic effort at
organizational change.
THE WORK OF HARRY LEVINSON 7
The fallacy of rewardpunishment psychology
In his (1973) The Great Jackass Fallacy, Levinson explains why the carrot
and the stick are ineffective management techniques. His psycho-
analytic framework for understanding human motivation and the
vicissitudes of the ego ideal shape his criticisms of most traditional
management theories of motivation and performance. These theories
often apply a `rational economic man' model and ignore unconscious
and latent dynamics beneath the surface and inside the worker.
Certainly the `carrot and stick' approach cannot address the sentient
world of workers and their search for meaning and dignity through
their productive lives in the workplace or as part of a profession.
Following this overview of Levinson's contributions to a psycho-
analytic study of organization, I provide the reader with the text of an
interview with Harry Levinson during the annual meetings of the
American Psychological Association.
HARRY LEVINSON INTERVIEW
(CHICAGO, IL, JUNE 2002)
MD: What are your concerns with the state of theory and practice of
organizational diagnosis today?
HL: I see a pretension to knowledge without knowledge. By that I mean
a pretence among consultants of paying attention to unconscious
processes within and between the consultant and client. Without the
concept of unconscious processes, consultants work at a manifest and
superficial level of structure and strategy without understanding the
psychological meaning of these perpetuated structures and strategies
and thereby without a lens for interpreting irrational and dysfunctional
practices.
MD: What drives the analysis of organizations deeper?
HL: The framework for organizational diagnosis was intended to
provide analysts and consultants a method for studying manifest and
latent organizational dynamics by combining factual, genetic, and
historical data with crucial interpretive [or narrative] data. More
importantly, it enables consultants to root their articulation of
organizational problems in a consensually validated narrative.
MD: Can you say more about this issue of `knowing without knowing'
in the practice of organizational consultation?
HL: Another dimension of `knowing without knowing' refers to the
consultant's use [or lack thereof] of self.
MICHAEL A. DIAMOND 8
MD: Do you mean self as instrument of observation, interpretation, and
understanding?
HL: Psychoanalytic organizational consultancy, unlike most consul-
tancy practices, requires a stance of open mindedness an acknowl-
edgement of `not knowing' and thereby a suspension of the assumption
of knowing. This humility is derived from self-knowledge. My concern
with the theory and practice of organizational diagnosis today is that
some organizational analysts and consultants, particularly those who
claim to assume a psychoanalytic orientation, are not sufficiently
equipped with adequate insights into their own defensive proclivities
and are thereby incapable of differentiating between their private
world of internal object relations and that of their clients and their client
systems. In other words, unanalysed or unacknowledged emotional
immaturity and narcissism in the consultant will lead to an incapacity
to adequately delineate self and object, internal and external realities.
MD: Are you suggesting that organizational analysts and consultants
ought to be psychoanalysed?
HL: I think consultants who claim to work psychoanalytically ought to
get psychoanalysed. We risk pretension without confidence in a
method of working with the client and the client system and without
having undertaken psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a theory of
human needs and as a clinical practice for organizational research
and consultation is best practiced and more deeply understood when
the organizational researcher or consultant has had a personal analysis.
Among organizational analysts and consultants today I see an `absence
of understanding the dynamics of repression'. Many consultants
working without the methodology of organizational diagnosis ignore
the impact and significance of historical data for present day
organizational challenges and for understanding more deeply the
stories and themes of interpretive data. Without the concept of
repression (or suppression) the organizational analyst cannot find
meaning nor locate psychic reality in the workplace because he or she is
unaware of the multiple functions and dimensions of stories (much like
dreams) and the degree to which they operate as defensive screens
concealing fundamental issues, problems, and motivations. Without
the experience and conscious awareness of how one's own repression
functions, the consultant will be incapable of sensing, feeling, and
observing these repressive processes within the client system.
MD: How does theory shape your work with organizations?
HL: In the Lewinian sense I believe in the value of good theory and by
THE WORK OF HARRY LEVINSON 9
that I mean that theory informs practice and is simultaneously
reformulated based on practice. Students need to immerse themselves
inside organizations in order to learn and experience first hand what
goes on in systems they wish to understand and help. We need to stress
the critical importance of immersion in the training and education of
psychoanalytic organizational consultants. Again, by immersion I mean
the integration of theory and practice in the context of ongoing
fieldwork and consultation experience under the supervision of a
practiced mentor. In sum, humility about what you do comes from
immersing yourself in the work in the field.
MD: What additional oversights do you find in the present work of
psychoanalytic organizational students and practitioners?
HL: I do not see a sufficient emphasis on understanding and applying
transference and counter-transference among consultants in dealing
with the client and the client system. There are multiple dimensions of
transference and counter-transference that if not understood and
incorporated into the work can leave the consultant vulnerable to
seduction by those in positions of power and authority and can leave
one vulnerable to provocation that is being unwittingly provoked by
a client. It is compelling to get close to people in power and to over-
identify with them and to get manipulated by them. We [consultants]
are not power people; often to the contrary, we assist people in power.
Organizational analysts and consultants are frequently deluded by
their proximity to power, magnifying their own narcissism, particularly
if they (as consultants) are unaware of their own narcissistic injuries
and proclivities and how these [unattended fragments of self] influence
their work with client systems.
MD: Can you say more about the function of narcissism in the process
of consultation?
HL: Only that professional narcissism is a problem. It shuts out learning
from others and their experiences.
MD: Do you mean that it [professional narcissism] works against
`knowing what we don't know' and may delude consultants into
viewing themselves as experts with some magic solution to their
clients' problems?
HL: Fundamentally, it [unawareness of narcissism] limits reflective
learning and thereby interferes with developing insights and observa-
tions helpful to clients and their organizations. There are no built-in
protections such as ethical standards against human aggression and
narcissistic injury. Like Freud, we have to teach ourselves what goes on
MICHAEL A. DIAMOND 10
in our guts and what goes on in our clients and their systems.
Organizational analysts and consultants are vulnerable here, since there
can be no policy that might guard against narcissistic hunger for
aggrandizement and approval. Some might argue that policy in the
form of ethical standards does not necessarily work to defend against
sexual improprieties either a subject for another time.
MD: Beyond attending to transference and counter-transference as well
as professional narcissism, what additional tools, conceptual or
personal, are necessary?
HL: Organizational diagnosis as a method helps to manage consultant
unawareness, because it requires interviewing many people. The
consultant subjectivity is to some degree tempered by the methodology
of data collection and interpretation assuming that the processes of
developing the organizational story involves either a team of consultants
and/or an outside consultant's consultant or analyst. Psychoanalytic
organizational consultants need their own consultants or analysts to
assist them in processing their own internal object relations during
consultations. They need someone to turn to while they're consulting
with clients the consultant's consultant or analyst. Also, keeping a
diary to understand one's reactions as well as processing with the team,
is helpful. Ideally, you find help from outside the consultation project
as well.
MD: What are your thoughts on the popular trend toward executive
coaching?
HL: I see what passes for executive coaching today as `consultation for
many'. Consultants are easily manipulated in this era of instant
gratification. The model of organizational diagnosis, or what we might
call psychoanalytic organizational consultation, is not for everyone. It's
too complex and time intensive. There may be gradations in which
people use the model and that's to be expected. Organizational
diagnosis is an ideal model. People will do as much of it as they can
or they may reject it. The model is a standard of practice an ego ideal,
aspiration within it there is a possibility of continued learning and
immersion.
MD: So you are saying that the psychoanalytic approach to organiza-
tional diagnosis and practice is not for everyone due to its intensity,
comprehensiveness, and long-time commitment?
HL: I am critical of the `brief time-frame' of many consultants and clients
today, which does not allow for sufficient commitment of time for
diagnosis and psychoanalytically informed consultation. I admittedly
THE WORK OF HARRY LEVINSON 11
have moderate expectations about the future prospects for psycho-
analytic organizational consultation. Clients and consultants prefer the
`quick fix' approach to organizations. This approach assumes the
consultant somehow magically knows what the client and client system
require without organizational assessment and diagnosis. Moreover, it
is this impatience and short sightedness that has led to the acceleration
and popularity of more prescriptive approaches that promise more
than they can possibly deliver. These approaches include executive
coaching as practiced by many non-psychoanalytic consultants.
Furthermore, these practices tend to focus on a part of or member of
the system rather than the system as a whole and that contradicts the
spirit of organizational diagnosis. One can imagine how this sort of
orientation would leave consultants vulnerable to counterproductive
collusions with the executive client, particularly in the case of
narcissistic executives with mirroring self-object needs and consultants
with idealizing self-object demands.
MD: Do you have other reservations on some forms of psychoanalytic
consultations popular today?
HL: I am critical of those consultations that move people off-site and
out of context: the work must take place in the `natural workplace
setting' rather than off-site somewhere that takes the consultancy work
and a potential understanding of the systemic psychodynamics out of
context. Consultants cannot understand the subjective and psycholo-
gical reality of organizations without exposing themselves to the
experiences of an organizational culture. This exposing or immersion,
then, requires the psychoanalytic consultant to engage him- or herself
in what I call psychological anthropology [psychoanalytic fieldwork
and participant observation]. We need to understand that the psycho-
analytic organizational consultation requires an understanding of and
engagement with psychological anthropology.
CONCLUSION
Harry Levinson's contributions to the theory and practice of organiza-
tional consultancy are extensive and relentless. His commitment to
psychoanalytic theory and the integrity of organizational consultation
shaped by psychoanalysis are legendary. His conceptualization of
organizational diagnosis has established a framework and benchmark
for genuine systemic analysis and change that is a measure of
consultants and clients commitment to real change. For many
individuals in the field he has been a mentor and for others he has
been an outspoken yet constructive critic. In the early years of the
MICHAEL A. DIAMOND 12
International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations,
during my presidency of the Society and beyond, he fulfilled a learned
role at the end of each symposium where he would summarize what
we may have learned and where we might go next in the advancement
of the application of psychoanalytic theory to organizations. Always
the mentor, educator, and responsive leader, Harry Levinson's impact
on the field and the people he has worked closely with over the years is
infinite.
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